Department of Continual Decay
DOCD is a creature that lives in 'the studio', though that term hardly applies to what I do. I mostly make music for my own satisfaction.
6
songs
40
plays
Non-nutritive Subroutine
exorable
Bhopal
stellar
rounddown
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The Department of Continual Decay started as a home-recording project with several home tape decks, a Y-splitter, several 'toy' keyboards and a couple of Digitech effects processors in 1987.
Since then, DOCD has been through a number of different phases. Since 1995 or thereabouts, most music has been produced inside of a laptop with various inexpensive and/or Open Source software.
Stylistically I like to experiment, like polyrhythms, and have a general penchant for melody. Other than that I go all over the place from conventional composition to cut-and-paste noise/ambient collage.Have you performed in front of an audience?I have played exactly one live, solo show. That was in 1990 in a place otherwise dedicated to local punk rock, metal and hardcore bands in Salt Lake City, Utah. People didn't know quite what to make of me. Since then I've collaborated on stage with other musicians, and even composed a film score to a short movie for a college friend, but really nothing since 1995.
Your musical influences
(in order of circa-2020 influence)
Steve Roach
Techgnosis Records' entire catalog
Johann Johannsson (RIP)
Søren Nordström
Tangerine Dream
Cybered
Ben Rama
Flembaz
Apocalyptica
Arvo Pärt
Yello
Depeche Mode
Richard H. Kirk / Cabaret Voltaire
Slayer
Eric Satie
Igor Stravinsky
Carl Orff
John Digweed
Sasha
Cliff Martinez
Wizzy NoiseWhat equipment do you use?
From 2003 up until June 2020, most of my music was made inside one laptop computer or the other. As a weird silver-lining of extended unemployment and the Covid-19 pandemic, I've been gifted a massive chunk of time, and in June I decided to turn it to intensive creativity. That led to setting up all the hardware I had kept in storage for the better part of 15 years, taking stock of that for the way I create now as opposed to then, and flipping some of the nicer vintage gear to acquire some new toys.
Primary software environment:
macOS and Linux
Audacity 2.x (I'm addicted to paulstretch...)
AU Lab / Hosting AU / Element
LMMS
a wide range of (mostly free) AU and VST instruments... some of my favorites are alphakanal's Automat1, u-he's Tyrell N6, Linplug's FreeAlpha, and Digital Suburban's amazing Dexed
Hardware:
old stuff that's still awesome: Casio VL-1, Yamaha VSS-30, Roland TR-707, Roland JP-8080, Digitech DSP-128, Alesis Quadraverb, Boss Micro BR
new stuff (or stuff new-to-me) I've added recently: Korg SQ-1, Behringer Neutron, Teenage Engineering PO-16, Arturia Keystep 32, Roland SH-32, Yamaha PSS-480, Arturia Microfreak
stuff that's on it's way, and I'm super-excited to play with: Korg NTS-1, Korg Volca Drum, Bastl Kastle 1.5
All of this has necessitated finally sitting down and getting a grasp of MIDI (yes, go ahead and laugh)Anything else?
The best work comes from knowing your equipment, whether it be material or virtual. I've made a lot of crap that should have been called 'still learning how to use it' sketches. These days I deliberately use a lot of single-purpose, limited software because I know exactly what it does and won't spend hours lost in some super-workstation's GUI and menus.READ MORE
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